I saw my land in the morning
And O but she was fair
I saw through the mists of morning
I saw my friends in the morning
They called from an equal gate
On as the voices roll
Across the sand I saw a black man stride
To fetch his fishing gear and broken things,
Its proud descent from ancient chiefs and kings.
Across the sand I saw him stride:
Sang his black body in the sun’s white light
The blackness of the jungle’s starless night.
He stood beside the old canoe which lay
Upon the beach; swept up within his arms
The broken nets and careless lounged away
Towards his wretched hut beneath the palms,
Nor knew how fiercely spoke his body then
Kyk-Over-Al in British Guiana was one of five literary magazines in the Caribbean that were important partners to the shaping of West Indian literature in the first half of the 20th Century.
The other four magazines were Trinidad and The Beacon in Trinidad, Bim in Barbados and Focus in Jamaica.
But it was revived in 1984 when Ian McDonald became joint editor with Seymour.
